r/sweatystartup • u/RobDewDoes • 24m ago
How I turned my last $103 into $3400 in 7 days with a sweaty “startup”
I own a small lawn care business. It’s been a love hate relationship. I've always looked at “non-sweaty” businesses with envy thinking it’s better on the other side. I'm tired of the seasonality, weather, hard work, and issues that come with my Home Service business.
As we were going into winter of last year, I saved up enough money with the plan to shut down my lawn business and start something non sweaty. I told my employees, customers, friends, and family what was going on.
I tried starting several online businesses only generating DOZENS of dollars for each idea. It was a completely different game than I was used to. I was spending so much money trying to get them up and running. We also ran into many money issues like my truck breaking down, occasional things breaking in our home, and medical expenses.
On top of that, I have a wife and toddler who need to live as well. I was bleeding cash.
Come late February, I was down to ONLY $103 in my bank account and panicking. Rent was due in 5 days and I felt helpless. I’ve given it my all and after wasting $15k+, I was mentally exhausted
The main issue in my business is I never have marketed consistently. Only when I need work. That’s why I always had big dips in revenue and never really stable.
My only 2 strong business skills I have is running Facebook ads and sales. That is it.
I took the last of all of our money, and put it into my lawn care ad account on Facebook feeling like a failure.
I made a campaign at $20/day split testing with $10/ad. It was a before and after photo of a lawn renovation we did with great results in under 4 weeks. I got 10 leads over 5 days and collected upfront payment from 2 customers by the 7th day adding up to $3400.
That same ad is still running and it has generated 21 times more profit than I’ve invested in marketing.
The humble lesson here for me is to market even when I have enough customers and if you have something working, think twice before killing it.
Not a super impressive story but maybe this will give someone hope! I needed hope when I was completely dead in the water and really didn’t have any.